A Criminal Piece Of Legislation

November 30, 1991

Congress adjourned Wednesday with one major piece of legislation left mercifully undone. The politically inspired anti-crime bill fell in a battle between Democrats and Republicans over which side is the toughest on lawbreakers.

One victim of this tawdry competition was the proposed five-day waiting period on the purchase of handguns. President Bush had said he would approve the modest gun-control measure only if it were part of the anti-crime package.

The Democratic and Republican versions of the bill sought to expand the death penalty to more than 50 crimes, including drug crimes that do not involve murder and attempted murder. Both versions also reduced the rights of defendants.

The House approved the Democratic version, which Mr. Bush promptly threatened to veto. He said he wanted a tougher bill, and Republican senators prepared to filibuster for the cause. Senate Democrats gave up and the bill died.

Republicans have long acted as if the crime issue belonged to them. Mr. Bush, like Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan, wants to be seen as tough on crime during an election campaign.

But mandating government to kill more people, as both sides proposed, is no solution to crime in the streets. Tough gun-control legislation manifestly is. Semiautomatic weapons remain legal. Banning them would accomplish far more than putting more men and women on death row or restricting inmates from filing appeals while they are behind bars.

Modest gun-control provisions, such as the Brady waiting period, while laudable, should not be used as a sop. It deserves consideration on its own merits.

The moral compass of the two political parties is clearly broken when they try to outbid each other on the death penalty. This debate proved as well that neither Congress nor the president can be trusted to safeguard the Constitution.

The bill that almost passed -- the one Mr. Bush said was too weak -- restricted the habeas corpus rights of defendants in federal courts. It also eased the search and seizure rules set down by the Supreme Court of the United States. The standard would become, not a warrant, but "good faith" on the part of police officers making a search.

The difference in the Democratic and Bush bills was simply that the Bush version would have driven a larger hole through well-established legal protections.

It might be a bit much to expect politicians to defend the rights of the accused. This is thought to be almost un-American these days. Better to expand the death penalty as no civilized nation has done than to try to deal with the roots of crime.

But is it too much to hope that someone in Congress would defend the Constitution